Empire, Race, and Gender: The Ancient Origins of White Supremacy and Patriarchy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

genealogy-4204210, March 2026

 

Empire, Race, and Patriarchy

 

It is no surprise that premodern hierarchical social orders worked with techniques of domination that used (embodied) naturalisation and patriarchy and forms of environmental determinism in differentiating between classes of persons. Other scholars have also mooted the possibility that ideas of race, as they developed from the 15th century in the West, built on pre-existing ideas and practices. For example, Wade (2015) reflects comparatively on pre-modern precursors to modern ideas of race. Nederveen Pieterse (1992) also has a few comments on this topic. The idea of “proto-racial” thinking has also been discussed by such as Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler (2009) and Isaac (2004). Indeed, the much more race-adjacent idea of “limpieza de sangre” in 15th-century Iberia (more obviously “racial” in that it used the word “raza”, albeit to mean [Jewish or “Moorish”] lineage rather than appearance) was clearly inflected by pre-existing ideas about religion and ritual practice, rather than biology.

 

Nevertheless there is something about the incredibly wide sweep of the material, the insistence on the constitutive role of patriarchy, and the forceful framing of the argument about empire that really helps to contextualise and relativise modern racism in an original and compelling way. I very much enjoyed the piece and think it makes an important contribution.

 

I think the article could be made even stronger by developing rather more the question of what difference did race/racialisation make? Was it just that it “refines this structure” of domination (p. 5, line 215) and “stabilizes and administers this [pre-modern] logic more efficiently” (7, 281) and “formalize[s] classification” (9)?  Or did modern racism involve a much bigger qualitative change? Linked to this is some ambiguity in the paper about whether pre-modern ideas count as “racism” or not. Sometimes they are “a grammar of domination that predates race” (7). Sometimes they are “racialization in practice without an explicit racial theory” (9) or “racialization … [that] functions without modern racial doctrine (12)  (although this prompts the question of whether 16th-century colonial powers had an “explicit racial theory” or “racial doctrine” - which in turn begs the question of what such a theory or doctrine consists of).

 

It might be as well for the author to cite more of the previous work that explores the relevance of colour, “race” etc. for e.g. ancient Egypt - some scholars would say such things were more or less irrelevant in the ancient world and did not constitute racism (Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc. - and also China) (Hannaford 1996; Thompson 1989; Snowden 1983, 1970). Others disagree, in different ways (Goldenberg 2009; Thompson 1989; Isaac 2004; Dikötter 1992; Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler 2009). In short, while I am convinced by the author’s interpretations of the cases, it might be as well to acknowledge diverse views.

 

In this regard too, the paper tends to flatten out what “modern racism” consists of. The racism of the 15th century worked in very different ways from the racism of the 19th century for example (indeed some people would argue that 15th-and even 16th-century ideas do not qualify as properly “racial” at all).

 

Another less pressing question is that, if “empire” is the necessary condition for a system in which inequality is anchored “in the body, in genealogy, in geography, and in moral psychology”, what counts as “empire”? Some kind of definition might help.

 

Also, the author tends to take a bit for granted what “naturalisation” consists of: ideas about what “human nature” was vary quite a bit, even in the Western world, over the centuries since 1500; and doubtless there was even greater diversity in whatever was implied by invoking something called “nature” across the geographical and historical landscape covered by the author. For ancient China, for example, Dikötter (1992: 3) says the Western concept of human nature is hard to apply because “physical composition and cultural disposition were confused in Chinese antiquity”. This raises the question, for China and more generally, of whether something “natural” was always seen as fixed and immutable in some way? If heredity is seen as shaped by the environment, rather than being fixed and immutable - as was often believed in the Western world at least until the very late 19th century (and, with the advent of epigenetics is now back on the table), what implications does this have for the idea that “race” is immutable because it involves inherited elements? See the author’s statement re. the Bible that, with the idea of Ham’s lineage, “difference becomes inheritable and durable” (p. 12): if heredity includes acquired characteristics, this is put into question; also, as Banton (1987) argues, when “race” is understood as lineage, the descendants of an ancestor can be of the same “race” while being physically very varied, e.g. in terms of skin colour.

            On this question, see the book by Wade, cited above, and Wade (2002). Probably the author might not choose to develop this in any depth, but some acknowledgment could be made that nature and naturalisation are not necessarily universal concepts.

 

The section on Isidore’s Etymologiae is great, but as Christianity was covered in a previous section, this seemed to me to miss the opportunity to explore the work of medieval Arab writers, who had a lot of denigrating things to say about Africa, and who were a great influence on Christendom. Also, in relation to idea of environmental determinism, see Glacken (1967).

 

If the author chooses to develop any of these topics, space could be made by simply leaving out one of the case studies…

           

Minor point: Jeremiah 13:23’s statement “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots?” is interesting not only because it chooses blackness as a sign of fixity, but also because it juxtaposes the Ethiopian with a non-human animal.

 

 

References cited

 

Banton, Michael. 1987. Racial theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dikötter, Frank. 1992. The discourse of race in modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, eds. 2009. The origins of racism in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glacken, Clarence J. 1967. Traces on the Rhodian shore: nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Goldenberg, David M. 2009. The curse of Ham: race and slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hannaford, Ivan. 1996. Race: the history of an idea in the West. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Isaac, Benjamin H. 2004. The invention of racism in classical antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 1992. White on black: images of Africa and blacks in Western popular culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Snowden, Frank M. 1970. Blacks in antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press.

---. 1983. Before colour prejudice: the ancient view of blacks. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Thompson, Lloyd A. 1989. Romans and blacks. London: Routledge.

Wade, Peter. 2002. Race, nature and culture: an anthropological perspective. London: Pluto Press.

---. 2015. Race: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I truly appreciate the time and effort you have dedicated to helping me improve my article. I have integrated all your suggestions and created a document explaining the changes I made. All additions are in red in the new article version.

Greetings,

The author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, this is a strong and original piece of research that makes a meaningful contribution to analyses of racism. I have no recommendations for improving the piece. In fact, I am inclined to include this text in my own teaching on racism. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I appreciate your support.

Sincerely,

the author